


this body, this ivory.

by diaghileafs



Category: The Hour
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 17:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaghileafs/pseuds/diaghileafs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sorry I couldn't make your do, darling, I went to see my daughter..." Lix doesn't go to the funeral; she is a discarded bunch of white lilacs, a condolences card, a postcard marked Chantilly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this body, this ivory.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sylvia Plath's 'Childless Woman'.

Lix doesn't go to the funeral; she is a discarded bunch of white lilacs, a condolences card, a postcard marked _Chantilly_. He doesn't ask questions, he doesn't try to contact her, and when Miss Rowley- black silk, matted eyelashes- says she hates her at the funeral a week later, Randall doesn't argue but he finds a seat close to the door, looks for her in the crowds outside: all handkerchiefs and delicate tears. He throws soil on the coffin twice, once for himself and once because she wants to be there, he knows that, because she loves her beautiful boy, and that's why she can't be there, why she's run across an ocean because she lost two children that day, she needs to say goodbye to them, or _au revoir_.

By June, the board has had enough, _The Hour_ is still lacking a foreign correspondent and the position is open. They interview a young woman called Agnes, fresh out of the World Service, and her name- written in perfect cursive on the dotted line- tells Randall instantly everything he needs to know about the child, even before he's met with her weak handshake, the lipstick that's too pink for her face, the shrill giggle and Monroe wiggle. She's pure, a picture perfect ingénue; still living in a naive daydream of ambition, the glint of a true love, an undiscovered kiss in her eye not yet dimmed by crying. He reads through pieces of her work: good but schoolgirl stuff, devoid of any real emotion, the rawness which being in the middle of warzones and battlefields for years entails. She doesn't know about real suffering, not more than a snagged stocking or an empty dance card; she hasn't seen men lined up in a row and shot at point-blank range, hasn't hear the gunshots or their wives' screams. The heavily lidded, lip-licked men love her, of course, and he asks them to give him a bit more time, he can get Miss Storm back. _A month_ , Douglas growls _, thirty days til the job goes to the Taylor girl_.

Randall waits; he touches base with his one of his contacts, a stringer from Paris, and writes a letter to the address they found for him. Summer burns on, three weeks later- at four in the morning, for the first time since that last dingy room in the back streets of Jaén, he prays and sleeps on the left side of his bed, her side.

 ____________

She rings him on the 28th day; her voice breaking on his name and sounding as smoky as it had done in Spain, when she'd been a slave to insomnia and could easily chain a packet of his favourite cigarettes, while he slept or went out to take photos in the twilight wreckage. She's back in London, mentions nothing about the programme, whether her job is still hers, just says she wants him to pick her up outside the _Lyons' Corner House_ on Totten Court Road, ten O'clock sharp, and puts down the phone.

He doesn't need to ask where it is she'd actually like to go, the next day as his Bentley slides up to the pavement and she's there waiting in the bright sunshine, slumped against the audacious art-deco exterior, he just drives like he's supposed to and lets _Hitchcock's Half Hour_ hum between them, remains silent like she needs him to. When they reach the cemetery, he doesn't follow her lead and slip out of the leather-backed comfort of the car, smiles instead, saying he'll be there in a few minutes, he has the paper to occupy him until the seats grow hot, the sun beginning to make it increasingly hard to read the mundane stories of the day, and keep his mind from flicking back to her; how she looked in her black dress and sunglasses, how the thin she'd become, how the light danced on the wick of her carefully painted mouth, the way he could have just kissed her on the journey but did not.

After fifteen minutes, he finds her by the grave on her knees, chattering away under her breath about her trip across the channel and picking the weeds which have sprouted around the headstone: _Sorry I couldn't make your do, darling, I went to see my daughter and I've told her everything- I warned her about the trouble you can be, so don't go breaking her heart, Lyon, is that clear? Because I'm her mother, I'll know_ , and she blinks up to see Randall beside her, as though she'd forgotten where she was, as though she'd been expecting it to be Mr Lyon's hand offering to help her up, a more intense shade of blue eyes boring into her. So, she stands, resting most of her weight against his shoulder upon rummaging around in her bag for three stones, pearly orbs, perfectly white.

"You're not Jewish," he says obviously, watching her move forward and arrange the pebbles in a careful triangle on the yellowing patch of glass.

Lix steps back again, comes to rest her head on his shoulder, "flowers die," the words ripple across the scared garden before she turns, his arms wrapped around her shaking frame suddenly, and bursts into tears, tears she supressed for too long because she's exhausted- a childless woman.


End file.
